From: Robert Hettinga Subject: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in Digital Commerce Date: Thursday, October 15, 1998 2:03 PM The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Dan Geer Senior Strategist and VP, CertCo, Inc. Risk Management is Where the Money Is Tuesday, November 3rd, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA The focus of "security" research today is the study of "trust management," i.e., the study of how trust is created, propagated, circumscribed, stored, exchanged, accounted for, recalled and adjudicated in an electronic world. This is both natural and mature -- natural because security is a means and not an end, mature because security technology must differentiate along cost-benefit lines. All the security technology that you can buy today enables some aspect of trust management and the academic and entrepreneurial segments alike are busy supplying many novel ways to propagate trust. They have it all wrong. Trust management is definitely exciting, but like most exciting ideas it is not important. What is important is risk management, the sister, the dual of trust management. And it is risk management that is the part of financial services that will drive the security world from here on out whether you realize it or not. Dan Geer is VP and Senior Strategist for CertCo, Inc., market leader in digital certification for electronic commerce. Dan has been at a number of security oriented startups in the Boston area since leaving academia where he was Manager of Systems Development for MIT's Project Athena. He holds a S.B. in EE/CS from MIT, and a Sc.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard. He was deeply involved in medical computing for fifteen years. A frequent speaker, popular teacher and member of several professional societies, he has been active in USENIX for some years at the Board level. His recent publications include "The Web Security Sourcebook" (Wiley, 1997) and the security chapter in Leebaert's "The Future of the Electronic Marketplace" (MIT, 1998). This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, November 3, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, October 31st, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: December Joseph DeFeo TBA January Ira Heffan Internet Software and Business Process Patents February Roland Mueller European Privacy Directive We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'